Self,Consciousness and Agency in The Egoist

This article re-reads representations of the self and agency in George Meredith’s The Egoist (1879) by drawing new connections between the novel and Victorian psychological theory. Critical discussions of The Egoist and psychological themes have rightly stressed the many ways in which, in Meredith’s novel, impersonal forces, biological, physiological and ideological, threaten to obliterate any notion of the self as discrete and autonomous. Yet Meredith maintains a strong ethical investment in individual agency. Comparing metaphors of fluidity, used to describe the self and consciousness in Meredith’s text, with similar images taken from the work of G. H. Lewes and James Sully, I argue that Meredith presents the self’s plasticity as crucial to its individuation and potential autonomy, even while that same plasticity also underlines the self’s vulnerability to social and ideological forces which threaten its independence. Clara’s individuality and agency take on distinctive political significance by challenging oppressive gender norms. Yet the vulnerabilities and bewildering complexities of individual subjective life, expressed in Meredith’s extravagant extensions of psychological metaphors, mean that any one self’s moves towards greater freedom must be fraught with uncertainty. The final part of the essay draws new connections between the psychological imagery that I have been exploring and Meredith’s engagement with human evolution. Clara’s individuation and capacity for autonomous action give the lie to Willoughby’s pseudo-Darwinian schematisation of her identity, yet the relationship between self and evolution remains a serious and complex issue in the novel.